Women across Nigeria are protesting the abduction of 234 schoolgirls from Chibok, in north east Nigeria, which took place on Monday April the 14th. Starting from Wednesday the 30th of April, protests and rallies are planned in Abuja, Ibadan, Maiduguri,…

While South Africa and the world were mourning the death of Madiba, a young lesbian was murdered in Ratanda, Johannesburg. Maleshwane Emely Radebe was murdered on the 7th December 2013 aged 32. She was stabbed to death alongside her girlfriend…

From Center for Women’s Global Leadership by Bernedette Muthien, South Africa In 1993, the year of the germinal UN conference in Vienna, the first President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, affirmed that all freedoms (and hence oppressions) are interdependent. This…

In 2012 there were 10 murders of black lesbians, gays and transgender people in South Africa. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which includes the death penalty and makes LGBTI people and anyone or organisation that supports or helps them, into…

Perhaps that segues into my column about desirability especially since I am speaking to a woman currently living in India. This week I continue my column about desirability in the workplace. Sneha Subra is not just a friend of mine but my essential rock, and ours is a truly romantic story of friendship. I am privileged to have trudged through teenage-hood side-by-side with such a dynamic intelligent friend and now to be walking through adulthood still together with her in loyal friendship. She is an educator and writer currently based in India. She is a graduate of Knox College in Illinois and Azim Premji University in Karnataka, India.I recently spoke with her about her experience as a woman in education. “Chinchilla” is an inside joke. Enjoy!

Ayesha Imam and the women she worked with for years in the Nigerian organization BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights possess those very traits. The group, founded in 1996, fights to protect women’s rights in the maze of the Nigerian legal system, with its overlapping religious, secular and customary laws and courts.

Imam tells me they use tools from whichever system can “recuperate rights,” believing it is often possible to arrive at similar conclusions by working through Muslim discourses or international human rights. “My issue,” she underscores, “is not where you come from, but where you arrive at.”

It is nearly two months since the Nigerian Senate passed the Same Sex Marriage Bill [SSMB 2013] yet the Bill is still awaiting presidential approval. It’s not clear why Goodluck Jonathan is dithering over a decision but possibly because of…

From inkanyiso – Another young black lesbian murdered. Duduzile Zozo, a 26 year old from Thokoza, East of Johannesburg was murdered on 30th June, 2013. Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper reported that, “The 26-year-old’s half-naked body was found in…

Seven men will be sentenced for 43 offences â€“ ranging from rape and conspiracy to rape to supplying Class A drugs to using an instrument to procure a miscarriage â€“ against six underage girls. But what about the police officers and social workers whose refusal to act enabled these rapes? Will they be prosecuted for aiding and abetting rape? Were they involved in other ways? Is that why they didnâ€™t act against rape? Or is it their bias against working class children and against rape victims generally?

From Feminists SA – Rape as slang – or a banal misogyny Almost everyday, I hear something that disturbs me; the use of rape casually, as a slang, mostly by males, on social media and in conversations. “Rape” is used…

How well this will work remains to be seen. There are millions of Haitian women who fall completely outside the radar of the courts, the government, local and international NGOs and any other official body. There also seems to be a focus on violence in camps but violence also takes place in established neighbourhoods such as Jalouzi and Cite Soleil. And women are often too fearful to report sexual violence especially when the perpetrator is someone they know – family member, neighbor, co-worker. Legal reforms are needed and a step in the right direction but there has to be education and rape centers opened in all the neighborhoods – if women do not have access to support then they the violators will remain free.

Jalouzi is a hillside neighborhood of about 200,000 people overlooking lower Petion-Ville. It is accessible from two roads, one at the top and one below. The view from the top is stunning. From here you can see Port-au-Prince looking east…

From Bernedette Muthien gendercide it took a full week of straitjacketing generations of genocidal femicidal trauma for the clay dam wall to explode and flood me in torrents of collective grief a poet with no words a lifelong activist struck dumb…

My most visceral thoughts are right now with all the children who have been robbed of their childhoods by war and conflict. Oftentimes war and conflict can be in the home, in the family. Sometimes it is literally in war trenches. It is the time to speak out for the protection of the African child’s childhood where the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other documents such as the African Charter on the Rights and Responsibilities, fall short. Heaven, bless the child to speak and be heard. Heaven, protect the child.

From Thought Leader – Talia Meer asks what is the point of “1 billion Rising” and from Women and Beyond the Global – Wondering about Outrage! beyond personal gratification? Particularly when it is selective, ie where was the outrage when…

Stories in the media of mothers and fathers giving away their children for a ‘better life in the US’ continue to appear. Stories like this one also raise the question on whether ‘orphans’ are really orphans as their daughter is placed in a local orphanage. A study by Save the Children found that 4 out of 5 children in orphanges actually had one living parent. The right questions are not asked regarding the social violence and injustices which force parents into situations whereby they feel they have to give up their children and undergo the pain of such a separation? Why is it so easy to take advantage of vulnerable Haitian women and children and what levels of coercion are taking place? What really happens to many of these children? Right now the numbers for people living under food insecurity are over 2 million.My host, community organiser and educator, Rea Dol believes these figures are an under estimation and I myself regularly meet people who have not eaten or under eater for days. But families in crisis need support to keep their children but instead of struggling with the people, saviors assault their dignity’.

As the year turns yet again, reflections are the order of the days as the compliments flow and plans for the future move ahead, still remnant of the past follow like bee to honey. Never mind that the remnants are…

We witness this not only across cities in the US but well beyond. Technically Chicago is not a war zone – people who live there may feel otherwise, I dont know. But its not the DRC, Palestine or Yemen but still the children of Chicago are being killed and they are not white kids. The children in the DRC along with their mothers are murdered and raped and there are the thousands who are trafficked and forced into armies of war, or labour or sex slaves or all of these.

â€œWhat is it that women want?â€â€œDonâ€™t they have enough already?â€â€œWhat more do they want?â€â€œDo they now want us to live in their petticoats?â€ â€œSoon we shall be singing â€˜majestyâ€™ and curtseying to the end of the world for them, isnâ€™t that where we are headed at this rate.â€â€œIf they have food on their tables and roofs over their heads, what more do they want?